A Good Name Vanishes

It took a lifetime for Eboni Wilson to build a reputation, and just a few hours to lose it.

The son of drug addicts, Wilson grew up poor and rootless in South Los Angeles. He lived in a garage, stole food and a car, and witnessed killings and robberies.

Wilson, now 28, turned his life around after winning a football scholarship to Washington State University. He played in the Rose Bowl, and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees and a doctorate in education.

On April 6, Wilson was four months into his job as a high school principal when a 16-year-old accused him of having sex with her in the auditorium at Chester High School in Chester, Pa. He was handcuffed, hauled before TV cameras and jailed for three hours.

Shocked and embarrassed, Wilson angrily protested his innocence. His wife, several students and a few teachers stood by him.

Then the student recanted. She said she made up the story because she felt pressured by detectives and her grandmother. After an excruciating delay of several weeks, all charges against Wilson were withdrawn May 24.

But the damage had been done. The allegations produced searing front-page headlines and sensational TV coverage. Wilson lost his job. Even worse, he lost his hard-earned reputation as a popular, dynamic educator who had inspired the impoverished students of a troubled inner-city school.

As Wilson sat poolside at his apartment complex in Bear this month, holding hands with his wife, he posed an elemental question:

“Where do you go to get your reputation back?”

The curious case of Dr. Eboni K. Wilson is a stark lesson in the debilitating power of public accusation. Even for defendants eventually cleared of high-profile charges, the stain is sometimes never fully cleansed.

Wilson is fighting to restore his reputation just as a more famous figure, singer Michael Jackson, is struggling to rebuild his career after being cleared of child molestation charges. For celebrities and private citizens tainted by accusations, the withdrawal of charges or a jury’s not-guilty verdict is only the beginning of a long journey of redemption.

“To be falsely accused is a universal nightmare. We all worry that it could happen to us,” said Eric Dezenhall, a damage-control consultant in Washington who advises corporate clients.

Few Americans are more painfully aware of the toxicity of false accusations than former U.S. Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan. A jury in 1987 exonerated Donovan of charges that he and his construction company had defrauded New York City, prompting his iconic lament: “What office do I go to, to get my reputation back?”

“You know, you never do get it all back,” Donovan said from his construction company office in Secaucus, N.J., where he continues to rebuild his reputation. “Even after all these years, I’m still dealing with it.”

Donovan fought back by suing the federal government and speaking out against prosecutors’ reliance on informants, one of whom testified against him but was convicted of perjury in the case. Donovan also speaks to journalism classes, imploring students to be skeptical of prosecutors’ allegations. He is active in a New Jersey program that uses DNA and other evidence to free wrongly convicted prisoners.

“I’m neither a saint nor a devil, but I’m not who they said I was,” he said.

Dezenhall said a public counterattack is often effective against the media-driven “modern day witch hunt” of false allegations, provided the public sees an everyman burned by injustice, not an opportunistic purveyor of spin.

“As a general rule, if you’re guilty, repent. If you’re innocent, attack,” Dezenhall said.

Many private citizens falsely accused of wrongdoing have counterattacked, often forcing accusers to back down. But in many cases the accusations harden into a stigma that defines their public image.

Richard Jewell, a security guard named by the FBI as a suspect in the 1996 bombing at the Atlanta Summer Olympics, eventually forced the agency to concede that it had the wrong man.

Jewell now works as a police officer in a small town in Georgia, but is still best known as the security guard who was somehow connected to the Atlanta bombing.

Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer and devout Muslim in Portland, Ore., was arrested and jailed by the FBI, which said it found his fingerprint near the site of a train bombing that killed 191 people in Madrid in March 2004. The FBI later admitted that it had misidentified the fingerprint. The agency dropped all charges and apologized in May 2004, but Mayfield is still rebuilding his law practice and his life.

Dr. Steven Hatfield, the former Army biological scientist named by the FBI as a “person of interest” in its investigation of anthrax letters that killed five people in 2001, has not managed to wring a retraction or apology from the FBI. Hatfield held two news conferences in 2002 to berate the agency and proclaim his innocence.

“Every misstatement, every minuscule wrong step, every wrinkle I’ve ever made in my life has become public, and I’m pilloried for it,” he told reporters.

Hatfield’s lawyer, Victor Glasberg, said he had advised Hatfield to publicly confront the FBI.

“The notion was that stepping forward and handing out the truth

Today, Hatfield is unemployed.

Wilson has counterattacked, but in a restrained way. He held a brief news conference the day the charges were dropped but had not mounted a massive public relations campaign.

“I’m not mad at anybody -- not the DA, not the young lady,” he said. “I don’t have time to be angry. You only get so much quality time on this Earth.”

His reputation is precious to him, Wilson said, particularly because 10 years ago he was as poor, disillusioned and undisciplined as many of his former students at Chester High.

“I’ll let my actions show the world I’m not what I was depicted to be,” he said.

Wilson’s wife, Eva, 33, listened to her husband and shook her head.

“He may not be mad, but I am,” she said. “I want my husband’s name cleared.”

The district attorney has not apologized. “This case is closed for now,” Delaware County Dist. Atty. G. Michael Green told reporters when he withdrew the charges.

Wilson’s lawyer, Arthur Donato, said authorities should have “exonerated Dr. Wilson unequivocally” and apologized to help him restore his reputation.

Donovan said Wilson should continue to rely on the support of his wife, co-workers and friends.

“I’ve learned that the people who really count when it comes to your reputation are those who love you and know you best,” he said. “Their respect rubs off on others.”

Wilson’s ordeal began March 29, when a school security officer noticed the principal and the 16-year-old entering the auditorium through separate doors. They left from separate exits about 15 minutes later, with the girl’s clothes “in disarray,” prosecutors said. Video surveillance cameras had captured a similar scene 12 days earlier.

Security officers notified police. The girl, who first told investigators that nothing had happened between her and Wilson, later told her grandmother that she and the principal had engaged in sex. Wilson was charged with indecent exposure and corrupting the morals of a minor.

Eva, an administrative official at the school, was with her husband when school officials confronted him.

“I knew it was a lie,” she said. “That’s not who he is. He would not have gone through all he’s gone through in his life just to throw it all away.”

With Wilson free on $50,000 bail, the girl recanted. She wrote letters to Wilson’s lawyer and to school officials saying she had lied.

The girl wrote that because her grandmother and police seemed to believe that she and Wilson had engaged in sex, “it would get the pressure off me” if she told them that they had.

“She thought something happen [sic], so I went along with her,” she wrote of her grandmother. She added: “I never got this much attention from my family but I like it.”

The girl did not believe the accusation would harm Wilson, she wrote, because “he is a grown man and he can take the pressure.”

She wrote of Wilson: “Dr. Wilson wouldn’t hurt me or any of his students. He is the one person who treated us with kindness.”

Wilson said he had talked several times to the girl because she was interviewing him for a book report about his 2003 autobiography, “Breaking the Cycle -- From Special Ed to Ph.D.”

As a child, he wrote, he once stole his mother’s crack cocaine and sold it to an addict for $100. As a special-education student at Thomas Jefferson High School, he cursed his teachers, threw a chair at one and didn’t bother trying on his SAT, scoring a dismal 470.

He said he was expelled from school after his life was threatened by gang members who had feuded with his older brother, Bernard. A tattoo on Wilson’s left arm honors his brother, who was killed in Los Angeles in 1995.

Several mentors, including a football coach and a real estate agent, inspired him to attend college. He graduated in 1999 from Washington State, he said, earning a master’s degree in 2000 and a doctorate in 2001.

In December, Wilson moved to Bear after he was assigned to his first principal’s job in nearby Chester by Edison Schools, a private company that ran eight schools in the district. He had been an assistant principal at an Edison-run school in Chicago.

Wilson was Chester High’s fifth principal in a year and a half. Some students didn’t have books. Some classrooms didn’t have teachers. Three months earlier, police broke up a brawl among hundreds of students in the cafeteria.

At 6 feet 2 and 250 pounds, with a bodybuilder’s physique, Wilson was a dominating presence in school. Known to most as “Doc,” he said he enforced the dress code, herded wayward students into class and instituted tough penalties for tardiness or cutting class.

“He really set a tone of discipline and high expectations,” said Twyla Simpkins, a Chester High English teacher. “He established a real rapport with the kids.”

Early in his tenure, Wilson said, he insisted that the school’s security camera system be repaired and upgraded so officials could better control violence, vandalism and absenteeism.

According to Wilson and his wife, who shared his office, he clashed with school security guards.

Wilson said he confronted them for allegedly being late and failing to discipline students. He required the guards to report to him each morning, he said, precipitating a “heated debate” on March 14.

Three days later, a guard watching a video monitor said he noticed Wilson and the girl entering and leaving the auditorium. The scene was repeated March 29.

On both occasions, Wilson said, he had radioed guards that he was heading to the auditorium to pick up trash and search for students cutting class.

“Guys, I’m making my rounds. Watch and let me know where I need to be,” Wilson said he told the guards.

Edison Schools, which recently saw the final year of its contract canceled by the local school district, said it wanted Wilson back.

“We’ve always had great faith in Dr. Wilson,” said Adam Tucker, an Edison spokesman. “I’m very proud of the way he kept his head high -- and also his wife, who went to school every day and stood behind him.” Tucker said Edison was discussing principal jobs with Wilson.

Wilson said he had offers from schools in several states to serve as principal. He said his former students had invited him to their prom and to speak at graduation, but the district superintendent said Wilson was not welcome back -- the school named a new principal after the Edison contract was canceled.

Wilson conceded that his reputation was still tarnished. Looking relaxed in a white tank top and white shorts, he smiled and squeezed his wife’s hand.

“Look, life is short,” he said. “I want to use my time to do what God put me here to do. He put me through a struggle and brought me out so that I can help others going through their own struggles. My reputation will take care of itself.”

In nearby New Jersey, Donovan said the accusations would probably follow Wilson for years. He said his own ordeal often reminded him of a Catholic school lesson from his youth: A nun cut open a pillow, let the feathers fly across the schoolyard, then ordered her class to gather them up. The recovered feathers filled only half the pillow.

“It was a lesson in calumny,” Donovan said.

“Once the feathers are gone, you can never gather them all back.”